The First Warmth

The fog clung low to the ground, a thick, white blanket that shifted and sighed between the trees. It caught on roots and dipped into hollows, too heavy to rise, too slow to leave. The orchard always held it longer than anywhere else.

Mira had arrived just as the sun was about to rise. She swung off her glider and stood for a moment at the edge of the orchard, letting the view settle into her. Rolling hills stretched away, softened by fog, and above them the sky was already tinged red with the coming dawn. The mirrors drifted far above, moving slow enough to feel like part of the heavens themselves, vast arcs of pale light that caught the night before the sun did, bending warmth down onto the land. At this hour their presence was clearest, a steadier glow than dawn, less fierce but just as certain.

The mirrors had always been there, older than any of her memories, and it was easier to think of them as another sky, quiet and patient, unshakable. They felt less like machines than a part of the horizon itself, something the world leaned on without saying so. She remembered being told once, back in her early lessons, that there were countless of them—more than she could imagine, strung across the orbit like a second skin of light. The exact number had slipped away, but it had been enough to make her feel small and cared for at the same time, knowing the warmth was shared across all the valleys and orchards, not just hers.

Mira stepped lightly over the still-damp soil, past a run of ground panels lined in old lichen. The warmth beneath them had gone soft. Not cold, not gone, just finished. She could tell by how the moss around them had started to curl at the edges, like it knew the heaters had shut off. That always happened when spring began. Not calendar spring, but the real one. The kind you could feel under your feet.

She stopped by her favorite tree. Not the tallest, not the strongest, just the one that always felt most awake when the warmth changed. Its roots spread wide into a shallow basin laced with tiny golden threads. Mira crouched and pressed her palm flat to the rootbed.

It took a moment.

Then it came, like always. That feeling.

Something shifting just beneath the skin of the ground. Not motion, not noise. A kind of attention, vast and without urgency. Like a muscle that doesn’t move, only holds. Like leaning into a silence that listens back. Not to answer, but to remind you that you’re already known.

She smiled.

“It’s like stillness that holds you” she whispered.

She always said that. And even if nobody really understood it, she didn’t mind. She adjusted her weight and leaned in closer, letting her other hand trail over the softened bark. The root surface here was faintly warm, just a little slick, like the skin of a fruit left out in the morning sun.

Near her fingers, one of the nutrient threads – a thin, flexible shoot running from root to soil – had started to thicken, a soft amber hue rising along its edge. The glow wasn’t meant to be noticed; it was just part of how the tree worked. Steady, unseen, and sure.

But Mira had already known it was healthy. She didn’t need the signal.

She could feel it.

—

The roots were waking up. She could feel it in the warmth, and in the way the ground seemed newly aware around her. The fungal threads below had begun to move again, pulling up stored heat. That always brought more moisture, more fog. It meant the system was doing what it was meant to do.

She didn’t know exactly how it worked, only that when the fog stayed longer and the roots grew warmer, the orchard was beginning to stir from its long stillness. The first day of spring had arrived.

Mira lingered near her favorite tree, where the ground always felt a little warmer, a little more alive. She pressed her hand into the moss beside the rootbed and listened not with her ears, but with that quiet sense.

She didn’t look up when Lior arrived. She could hear the quiet squish of his boots, the creak of the basket strap across his back.

“I knew you’d be here early,” he said, setting his tools down beside hers. “You know I love to feel the orchard wake up,” she said, smiling.

He crouched next to her, careful not to disturb the rootbed, and pulled out a trimmed blade. Without speaking, he handed it to her, hilt-first, his way of saying you feel it better than I do.

Mira accepted it with a quiet nod and began working the moisture shoots that had curled too tightly around the inner root crown. The trick was not to cut too far in just enough to remind the plant it could let go.

“I think the one near the runoff stone didn’t settle right,” Lior said after a while. “There’s something off, I can feel it.” Mira nodded. “I felt it too. It feels stressed.”

He glanced over at the next tree, then back.

“Maybe one of the root-biting hares pulled at it again.” Mira raised an eyebrow. “You always blame the hares.”

Lior chuckled, more breath than voice.

He sat back on his heels and looked around, at the half-visible lines of trees, at the fog still resting between them.

“Hard to believe this all came back to life,” he said. “After how still it gets.” Mira kept her palm on the moss, eyes closed. “They don’t go away,” she said softly. “They rest. And then they listen.”

A nearby root-thread gave off a faint amber shimmer barely there, like warmth caught in the hush of a glow.

Mira smiled.

“Ah, you’re waking up too.”

And Lior just nodded and went back to work.

The Ailing Tree

They finished the trimming in silence. Mira checked the edge threads one last time and dusted her hands clean with a handful of dry moss. Lior leaned back on his heels, gave a single slow nod, and rose.

“That one’s good,” he said.

Mira stood with him, wiping her hands on her sleeves.

“Let’s see what’s going on with the one near the runoff stone.”

The mist had thinned just enough to make the next tree visible, a little off the regular path, tucked beside the slope where the hillside collected water from the long winter melt. Its upper branches clung close together, as if reluctant to stretch. The lower roots had pooled into themselves, knotting instead of reaching.

They crouched together near the outer mesh of the rootbed. Mira touched it first.

“Still holding tension,” she murmured.

Lior reached in beside her, frowning.

“Yeah. That’s not just late thaw. The node’s starved.”

The tree’s pulse was faint, barely any heat from the fungal link. The inner strands beneath the bark had gone dull and slack, like channels, once warm, now quiet.

“If we don’t help it now, it won’t take what the net sends,” Lior said. “And if it misses the surge” “It’ll fall behind,” Mira finished. “Then it probably won’t carry anything this cycle.”

She ran her fingers lightly over the surface, feeling for the old feed junction. It was hidden under a patch of raised bark, soft with condensation. Mira peeled it back gently, revealing the inactive fungal vein, its opening clogged with crystallized film.

“It’s blocked,” she said.

From a folded satchel at his side, Lior pulled out a rootwrap pouch, woven from pressed bark fiber and stitched with drying thread. He unrolled it slowly, careful not to disturb the inner layers.

Inside, nestled between padded moss sheeting, were a few living seals, thin and translucent membranes resting in a bed of nutrient gel, their edges pulsing faintly in time with the ambient warmth.

“One of the warmbacks should do it,” he said, lifting the smallest one out with both hands.

Mira took it, letting the seal warm in her palms before pressing it gently to the cleaned node. It clung like mist on glass, shimmered once, then settled its soft glow sinking into the bark.

They both sat back, watching.

“You can feel it already,” Mira said. “Yeah,” Lior whispered. “The strain’s easing.”

They finished securing the rootseal and sat back in the soft foglight. The warmth in the tree had steadied now. Quiet and humming low.

Lior leaned into his crate, sorting through tools.

“I should check the upper grove later,” he said. “A few trees up there still haven’t pushed new runners yet.”

Mira was only half listening. She had turned slightly, something had caught her edge vision. Above the ridge, high in the blue-grey arc of sky, the mirrors moved in their slow procession, vast and quiet. One of them flared. Not bright, just a quick, sharp glint, like a blade catching the sun at the wrong angle.

It was gone almost before she registered it.

Then, a longer flare. Thin. Moving quickly.

It dropped away from the flare point, briefly visible against the pale sky. Then lost to distance.

“Lior,” she said. “Hmm?” “One of the mirrors just flickered.” He didn’t look up. “Probably solar alignment happens all the time.” “No, it… something came off it. Or hit it. I think something’s falling.”

That made him glance up, but whatever she saw was gone now. He shrugged.

“Could’ve been lens calibration. They do a lot of that when seasons turn.”

Mira frowned, still staring at the empty sky. Her fingers curled slightly on the basket strap.

There was a silence she knew well, one that pressed gently at the edge of thought, like a hand hovering just short of touch.

Then Ashri’s voice came, quiet, familiar.

“That wasn’t part of the pattern.”

Mira blinked slowly, as if her eyes might still catch the glint she’d seen.

“It didn’t drift,” Ashri added. “It let go.”

Mira stayed still, gaze unfocused now.

“Was it… supposed to?”

A pause.

“If it held shape long enough, the wind might’ve carried it to the valley.”

Mira nodded to herself, tension pulling just behind her ribs.

“I’m going to check,” she said, already standing. “Check what?” Lior asked. “The valley past the ridge. If something came down, that’s where it might’ve landed.”

She paused.

“Ashri thinks it could’ve held together long enough to reach that far.”

Lior looked up from his crate.

“That’s a long ride for a maybe.” Mira just tightened the basket strap. “Feels like more than a maybe.”

He hesitated.

“Want me to come?”

She shook her head.

“No. Just log the rootbed. I’ll be back before warm meal.”

Lior didn’t argue. He just watched her for a moment, measuring something in her posture, maybe in her eyes.

Then he gave a small nod, like he’d accepted an answer she hadn’t said out loud. “Alright,” he said. “Just mark your trail if the fog comes in.”

She was already moving before he finished.

Ashri didn’t say anything. But Mira could feel that kind of silence, the steady kind, the kind that meant: go.

She veered off the orchard path, the fog thinning as she reached the perimeter stones. Her glider waited in the thistle-shed, propped against a post of woven stonevine.

It blinked once as she approached, sensing her signature, waking the drive loop. The seat flexed to meet her as she swung her leg over.

She gave it a slight lean, and it rolled forward, smooth and silent. The orchard dipped behind her, the ridgeline rising ahead.

Ashri said nothing. But the air felt tense now. Like a breath being held.

The Landing Site

The glider slowed as the slope leveled out. Mira leaned back slightly, letting it coast to a soft halt just before the gravel began to show through the moss.

The fog was thinner here, stretched and stringy, torn by the wind that had cut across the plain earlier. The terrain ahead sloped gently downward toward a runoff basin where old streambeds once ran. Above, the sky had taken on that pale, blunted color it always wore after the wind cleared.

Something in her chest tightened. A kind of waiting.

She dismounted, stepped carefully over the uneven ground, and scanned ahead.

It didn’t take long to spot it.

At the edge of a shallow rise, half-buried in a drift of grey dust and bent rootgrass, something had torn through the surface. The surrounding moss had curled back. Fungal threads near the impact point had browned, as if cauterized.

She approached slowly.

The object had clearly fallen, impact marks fanned outward in loose arcs, and fine shards were scattered along the descent path. Most of it was shattered. But one part remained intact: a dark segment of plating, partially open along one seam, a heat-scorched interface panel still flickering dimly.

Mira crouched beside it. Not close enough to touch. Not yet.

The object had clearly fallen, impact marks fanned outward in loose arcs, and fine shards were scattered along the descent path. Most of it had splintered on landing, but one part held together: a low, oval casing with stress lines along its back and a smooth top panel marked by faint engraved text.

Station: Lumen Point 4 – Sync Channel 11
Sensor Unit

She brushed the dust off with her sleeve. She’d seen illustrations of devices like this, used in sync calibration, in diagrams during group lessons. But never real. Never grounded.

“Ashri,” she whispered.

A pause.

“Yes.” “Is it part of the mirrors?” “It was.” “Why did it fall?” Ashri didn’t answer.

She stayed crouched beside the unit for a while, letting the wind move around her, listening for anything else: voices, systems, alarms. Nothing.

The plating was cool now. Safe enough to touch.

She reached for the oval casing, tested its weight. Heavier than it looked, but balanced. It shifted slightly as she lifted it, releasing a faint sigh, more feeling than sound.

“You’re really going to carry it?” Ashri asked. “Yes.”

There was no warning in Ashri’s voice. No approval either. Just presence. That was enough.

She cradled the unit against her side and walked back to the glider. The basket frame wasn’t made for this kind of shape, but she cinched it in with the strap she used for orchard bundles. A status light blinked once, then went still.

Before mounting, she turned back and looked at the shallow scar the object had left in the moss.

It had fallen clean. No fire. No shatter pattern.

It hadn’t been meant to fall.

She rode quietly, the wind no longer rising.

The Ride In

The glider hummed low beneath her as the path dipped toward the valley shelf. The wind had calmed, but she still kept her weight light, letting the frame adjust to the slope without resistance. The oval casing sat in the rear basket, still a bit loose but secure enough for the ride.

Around her, the land was starting to shed its winter hush. Patches of ground opened in smooth spirals as the fog retreated. A few new bloom streaks had appeared along the runoff gullies: early, maybe too early.

She let her mind circle back.

That flicker. The glint. The shape falling.

She hadn’t imagined it.

“Ashri,” she said, quiet but clear. “Still with you.”

A pause.

“Do you know what it’s for?” “Fine adjustments or data analytics. That would match the imprint.”

“And if it failed?” “It would reduce efficiency. Nothing too impactful.”

She tightened her grip on the guide bar.

“Could one of the mirrors have broken?” “Maybe, but this is accounted for. One fails, the others balance.”

“So this isn’t a crisis.” “Not to the mirrors.”

The glider bumped slightly as she crossed an uneven patch of dried rootbed. She let it slow, coasting quietly past the old listening well, half-buried now, singing its faint, unmeant song into the air.

“Then why does it feel like this matters?” Ashri didn’t answer right away. “Because it left orbit. That’s not supposed to happen.”

Mira let the silence stretch.

Ahead, the station finally came into view: low-slung, moss-covered, only distinguishable by the slight pattern-break in the hill and the soft reflection of the now blue sky visible in the windows.

She shifted her weight, letting the glider slow.

Lumen Point

The glider rolled to a quiet stop near the slope. From a distance, the station looked like nothing at all, just another rise in the moss-covered hillside. But up close, the geometry gave it away. No natural ridge split so evenly. No rootbed curved with that kind of intention.

She dismounted, letting the silence settle.

The entrance wasn’t marked, but it didn’t need to be. The path curved inward toward a tall seam in the hillside: clean-lined, matte, and built from some kind of compressed stone composite. The material caught no light. It just sat there, waiting.

She stood before it, not hesitating, exactly, but listening.

She’d never been this close before.

Time moves differently in the station. Mira had always known that. But now that she was here, she wasn’t sure what she was stepping into: morning, mid-shift, or something unmarked.

It probably didn’t really matter.

“Anything I should know?” she murmured.

Ashri didn’t answer. Or maybe she did, just by staying silent.

Mira shifted the oval casing in the basket, stepped forward, and crossed into the quiet.

She stepped through the entry seam.

The air inside was warmer. Not by much, but enough to feel it across her skin, a soft contrast that made her notice just how cold the outside still was. No sound announced the change. Just that quiet shift, like stepping into a room that had been holding its own rhythm all winter.

Near the entrance, tucked into a shallow recess, stood a low display alcove. It didn’t draw attention. Mostly a few items arranged behind glass, like someone thought they might matter.

Mira lingered only a moment before moving on.

She followed the hall as it turned gently, the light deepening slightly with each step. Her footsteps echoed faintly now, soft, but there. The sound stretched just enough to remind her how much space was above her, around her.

The air smelled like old warmth and polished bark. And underneath it, something dry and stony, like air released from a long-closed cavern.

She walked slowly, basket still slung at her side, the oval casing pressing against her hip.

She passed no one. But the space didn’t feel empty. Just quiet. Like a library without books.

At the curve of a junction, she paused, uncertain whether to call out, or keep going.

Then:

“Need help?” came a voice, gentle, not startled. It echoed slightly from above.

She looked up. A woman leaned slightly over a handrail from the next level, her hair pulled back in a loose wrap, sleeves rolled. Her expression wasn’t surprised, just curious.

“I brought something,” Mira said.

The woman’s eyes flicked to the basket. Then her eyebrows rose slightly, not alarmed, more like someone seeing a piece of a story they hadn’t expected to find again.

“Well,” she said, already moving down the stairs. “Let’s see what you brought. I’m Sela”
“Mira.”

The woman reached the base of the stairs just as Mira adjusted the strap on her basket. Up close, her expression stayed relaxed, but Mira could see her focus sharpen when she glanced at the oval casing.

“Not something I expected to see today.” the woman said lightly. “No,” Mira replied. “I think it fell off.”

The woman smiled, kind and curious.

They walked together through a side corridor, wider here, gently lit, the floor lined with smooth-set panels that softened each step. The walls had shifted tone slightly, pale stone giving way to something warmer, almost bone-colored. Overhead, narrow skylight slits let in a diffuse glow that bent across the curve of the hall. The architecture was still quiet, but more structured now, less like something grown, more like something intended.

“You are from the orchard side?” Sela asked.

Mira nodded.

“North slope. I was checking the rootbeds when I saw the flare.”
“And decided to pick it up yourself?”
“It didn’t seem like the kind of thing you leave out.”

Sela laughed gently.

“Well, no one’s going to disagree with you.”

They reached a soft-glow panel, and Sela placed her palm on the surface. It darkened for a second, then slid open.

“They’re in maintenance right now, but someone’ll want to see this.”

She gestured Mira through.

“You can hand it over directly.”

What Falls and What Rises

Mira stepped through the door into a softly lit space that felt both active and contained, like walking into the inside of a pulse.

The walls here were different, subtler in tone, with embedded seams and recessed lines that gave the space a quiet precision. A large circular bench surrounded a shallow interface basin in the center, where a group of people were gathered, discussing something, all focused on a live projection of orbit diagrams and mirrored telemetry arcs.

No one noticed her right away.

She paused, unsure.

“There’s a jitter on the shielding readouts,” one voice said.
“Baseline drift or live?”
“Not sure yet. The timestamp came late—could’ve been delayed through routing.”

Then a man turned. Older, composed, wearing a layered work apron dusted with fine trace powder.

He noticed the basket first. Then Mira.

“Is that…?”

Mira stepped forward, carefully lifting the oval casing out.

“It came down near the ridge. I wasn’t sure where to bring it, but… it didn’t seem like the kind of thing you leave outside.”

The man approached it gently, brushing a thumb over the surface as if confirming something by feel. He studied the casing, tracing the identifier etched faintly near the seam.

“That’s a sensor unit. Older imprinting,” he said, almost to himself.

Another technician looked over but didn’t approach. The others kept working, watching data, adjusting overlays.

The man nodded toward a low shelf near the bench.

“You can set it there. Someone’ll want to align it soon.”

Mira did. The casing made a soft settling sound as it touched the surface, like something relaxing into its proper shape.

She hesitated, then asked quietly:

“Does it matter that it fell?”

The man looked at her, not surprised by the question, not alarmed either.

“You’ve seen how the mirrors adjust when fog density spikes, right?”

Mira nodded.

“To keep the warmth from scattering too far.”
“Exactly. The mirrors can only respond if they know where the balance is tipping.”

He tapped the casing lightly with one knuckle.

“This one helped us listen. Not everywhere. Just one layer of the signal. But it fine-tuned how the array adjusts to seasonal change.”

Mira blinked, glancing back at the quiet interface wall. The soft light of the orbital arcs pulsed in slow rhythm, but now they felt… more fragile. Not broken, just dependent on more than she’d ever considered.

She opened her mouth to ask something else, but the moment stretched, and her mind caught instead on the idea that this thing, this object, which had landed near her orchard, had once been up there, helping keep a balance down here.

The man had already turned back toward his team.

Mira blinked, glancing back at the interface wall. The arcs pulsed steadily, so familiar. She’d seen them before in learning halls, etched into wall-panels, even sculpted into the playground shade canopies when she was small.

But somehow, they always managed to pull at her.

She knew what they were. She knew what they did. And still, every time she saw them live, moving and shifting like a system that spanned the sky. It pressed a little awe into her chest. Not fear. Just the kind of quiet that comes when you realize how much you don’t see.

And now, knowing that what had fallen, this thing, this shard, had been part of that delicate balance…

She touched the edge of the basket reflexively, as if still holding it.

I should’ve asked if that’s bad, she thought. But the words didn’t come.

No one seemed worried. But no one seemed to mind, either.

Later, Mira found herself wandering down a side hallway, one of those quiet loops that curved around the station’s southern edge.

She didn’t know if she was meant to be there. No one stopped her.

A recessed monitor panel along the wall flickered softly to life as she passed. It must have been linked to the logistics relay. The image was steady: a cargo vessel, already rising.

No sound. Just motion.

It moved with purpose, but not urgency. A small vessel, unmarked, its underhull still dark with the frost of ground-release, trailing soft exhaust in the pale sky.

Mira stopped walking.

She watched the ascent until it passed through the upper layer of cloud and was gone.

She didn’t know what was inside.

She didn’t know where it was going.

But it felt, somehow, like it had always been going. Like she’d just never noticed it until now.

Ashri spoke, quiet, almost thoughtful.

“Some cargo goes far.”

Mira said nothing. She kept her eyes on the empty sky, watching the fog begin to return to the ridge.